Can Los Angeles Lose Its Car-Loving Ways?

Just a decade ago, it was practically impossible to find a normal Los Angeles person who didn’t own a car. After all, being a car owner was a necessity if someone wanted to have a job. These days, however, it seems as if Angelenos have fallen out of love with their commutes.

Perhaps it is the influence of millennials, a group that is defined by their love of experiences over material goods. And for everyone who’s experienced Los Angeles rush hour, it quickly becomes obvious that spending several hours in traffic isn’t a good use of time.

The Death of the Ultimate Car Culture

There’s no doubt that the City of Angels has had a long-lasting love affair with the automobile. Nowhere is this more obvious than at the Peterson Museum. Located smack in the heart of the city, this magnificent museum is an ode to the vehicles that have dominated the streets of L.A. Less than a block away, one of the city’s most infamous unsolved crimes — the murder of rapper Biggie Smalls — took place in a vehicle. When people talk about the shooting, they often mention the two cars that were involved — a Chevy Suburban and an Impala. For better or worse, the history of Los Angeles is written in its roads.

L.A. Metro Explores Different Ways to Get People off the Roads

There are just too many people driving around Los Angeles. For years, officials have been quietly discussing ways to release some of the traffic that plagues the city’s streets on a daily basis. These days, they have started to come up with some very interesting solutions. They have proposed turning carpool lanes into toll roads, effectively charging people for the privilege to get to their destinations faster. There’s even been discussion around the idea of taxing car owners for the distance that they drive each year. One proposal centers around the idea of charging drivers for entering certain districts or neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the city continues to diligently work on expanding the subway system. A new stop on Wilshire and La Brea will make it a lot easier for commuters to get to work on time. Although the bus system in L.A. is fairly reliable, it suffers from the same issue that arises from driving a car each day — traffic. If cars are stuck in traffic, then so are the buses. The subway takes traffic underground, allowing the streets some relief.

The Olympic Effect

It’s less than a decade until Los Angeles needs to be ready for its close-up; with the Olympics coming into town in 2028, it definitely seems as if the city is ramping up its efforts to make cosmetic improvements. With road construction happening at an unprecedented pace, it definitely seems as if city officials want to make everything as beautiful as possible before the world shines its light on Los Angeles. For this reason, it’s easy to see why politicians might want to charge extra fees for those who use the roads more frequently.

After all, they don’t want to spend all these resources beautifying the roadways, only to have them fall into a state of dilapidation before 2028. These proposals would also net the city a tidy profit. The proposed mileage fee, for instance, would garner the city around $100 billion extra revenue over a decade. A proposal to charge extra for entering downtown L.A. would score the city an eye-popping $12 billion. It’s not difficult to see why some politicians are eager to set these plans in motion.

How the Sharing Economy Brought About a Shift

For years, it was practically impossible to get anywhere in Los Angeles if you didn’t own a car. These days, ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft are making life a whole lot easier for those who want to commute. It’s no secret that L.A. is one of the biggest markets for both of these companies. Part of this has to do with the fact that there is a huge community of artists who prefer freestyle work. While they may not want to sign up for a typical 9-to-5 job, working a few hours a day as an Uber driver, at their convenience, is certainly appealing.

With features like Uber Pool and Lyft Shared rides, commuters can cut down on their costs even more by carpooling with neighbors. Highly rated riders who live in Los Angeles hotspots, such as Hollywood, are sometimes offered discounts for the week, bringing the price down even more. Uber also offers special rates to those who travel to the same place frequently. Riders can set up a plan with their most frequently visited address, and Uber will offer them a set rate whenever they’re traveling to that area — even when surge pricing is in effect.

Crunching the Numbers

For some, the prices of ride-sharing are so low that it makes much more financial sense to take Uber or the subway to work instead of purchasing or leasing a car. After all, the cost of fuel in Los Angeles always tends to be exceptionally high. One gas run-up in 2007 led to prices that hovered around five dollars a gallon. At this point, the amount of vehicles on the road definitely became less — and it may have given officials a few ideas about how to cut down on the overbearing traffic in the City of Angels. But on an ordinary basis, it’s not uncommon for Los Angeles drivers to spend about $200 in fuel.

Add to that the cost of leasing or buying a car, as well as servicing it, and it’s easy to see how being a car owner can become prohibitively expensive. Then there are parking fees, as well as tickets whenever one forgets to pay the meter in a timely fashion. Residents often bemoan the parking tickets they get for street sweeping, which often occurs twice a week in the same neighborhood. With some of these tickets costing $73 or so, it makes sense that many drivers just cannot afford extra costs associated with driving a vehicle in Los Angeles.

An Environmental Concern

With millennials now taking the lead as a major part of the workforce, environmental concerns have come to the forefront. Los Angeles is a city in which it is very easy to see the environmental havoc posed by vehicles; the smog was once historically bad and still isn’t ideal. Many workers see their transformation into public transportation riders as a service to the environment.

Scooters from Lime and Bird now line the city as people figure out ways to ride that last mile or two without getting into a car. Biking has also become much more popular, with events such as Ciclavia taking over DTLA at times. However, the fact that Los Angeles is woefully bereft of bike lanes would be enough to give anyone pause about committing to a commuting life that consists solely of a bike.

Will Los Angeles Really Be Able to Give up Its Cars?

With three out of four commuters currently using their personal vehicles to get to work, it seems that a monumental shift will need to occur if anything changes in L.A. But some are banking that big transformations could happen in short order. After all, the internet is allowing more people than ever to work remotely.

In Los Angeles, many businesses are sensitive to the needs of their employees. They understand that a four-hour daily commute serves no one. Some will even offer working from home as a perk when they are trying to attract new talent. Depending on what the job is, new employees may even expect to work from home.

How the Housing Crisis Plays Into It All

Many believe that the housing crisis causes a great deal of the traffic Angelenos experience on a daily basis. When people cannot afford to live close to where they work, they often find themselves commuting for long distances. In Los Angeles, for example. someone might be able to rent an apartment near their job but not be able to purchase a home. For those who crave the dream of home ownership, this can be a frustrating conundrum.

After all, who wants to commute all the way from Santa Clarita when they go to work? Until more affordable housing is built or until more companies allow employees to telecommute, many people will be stuck in the commuter lifestyle.

Is an L.A. Without Cars Against the City’s Very Nature?

There’s no doubt that the car culture plays into the very mythology of Los Angeles. Throughout countless films and television shows over the years, we have seen the way in which this particular city has worshipped the car. But nothing lasts forever, and recent (literal) changes in the landscape have altered the way people once thought about the cars lighting up the Los Angeles freeways. Climate change is evident in places like Malibu, where a devastating fire recently wiped out multi-million dollar houses.

The Pacific Coast Highway

After the fires, the winter season started, which meant that torrential rains pelted the already vulnerable hillsides. Rapper Soulja Boy was caught in a mudslide in his car and lucky to escape with his life. Those who live in the exclusive enclave of Malibu are now likely questioning their decision to make a life there — if they were able to escape the wrath of Mother Nature this time around. After all, there’s really only one road in and out of town — the Pacific Coast Highway.

With the recent weather developments, it’s become painfully self-evident just how very dangerous that can be. Even some of the wealthiest celebrities in Malibu were left sleeping in their cars when they were evacuated from their homes; there were no local hotels available and absolutely no way to get out of town. This is unprecedented for Los Angeles, so it seems fitting that people might act in a way that is also unprecedented. By foregoing their hillside homes and moving closer to the city, they will cut down on their commutes substantially.

The days of cruising from one end of the city to the next may be slowly winding down, and climate change may play a big role in that. Although Angelenos will probably always worship the car, recent developments seem to indicate that they may do so from afar in the future.